vt.Buzz: Gov. Shumlin explains how he picked a winning horse – at the urinal

Here’s the thing people wanted to know after I went running last week with Gov. Peter Shumlin for a marathon preview story: What was his pace? Is he fast or slow? Even the troopers who provide security for him wanted to know what pace they could expect in Sunday’s relay race.

After a half-hour run down dirt roads, through woods and fields, including a random stop to say hello to a dairy farmer, I can tell you this: If you’ve seen him in action politically, you know his pace — it’s all over the place.

Slow when he’s got something to say, fast when he doesn’t, stopping when it strikes him.

He is the same running as he is politicking. It isn’t easy to keep up with Peter Shumlin in the same way it wasn’t easy for hitters to keep up with former major-league pitcher Greg Maddux — not because he’s fast but because he changes speed all the time. (At Sunday’s race, he passed me as I was withering at about mile 20 and he had just started his leg of the relay, making up time for his team, which finished in 4:09.)

Free Press photographer Emily McManamy and I went running with the governor last Wednesday evening. Our assignment was to do a story about the Vermont City Marathon relay teams, focusing on the highest-profile participant, the governor, who was running the 5.5-mile last leg.

For me, this was a case of my worlds colliding. I was training for the full marathon, so it only made sense to do the interview on the trail.

In truth, it was hard to tell what our pace was. I was carrying a small tape recorder, pestering the governor with questions along the way about everything from running to nuclear power. Emily was busy inventing a new sport — running with camera while shooting — that rivals the biathlon.

“You’re schooling me,” she shouted at one point as she trailed at a distance, when in reality she was working five times as hard as we were. Shumlin would politely stop to let her catch up, pass us, shoot a few shots and fall behind again. He offered to carry the camera, Emily wouldn’t hear of it.

On my tape recorder, our footsteps sound like horses clomping. Some of the conversation went like this:

On running: “It’s something you pick up in your 30s after you realize you’re not a kid anymore,” Shumlin said.

He was a young member of the House when that hit him. After adjournment one year, he said, “I got home and I tried to do a couple sit-ups and thought I was going to have a stroke, so I said something’s got to give here, so I started running. It’s also the age you realize you can’t treat your body the way you used to.”

He runs a few times a week, preferring dirt roads and trails to pavement, in part to go easy on his ligament-less left knee.

We shared stories of torn anterior cruciate ligaments, the rubber band that holds your lower leg snug to your upper leg — or not, once you’ve severed it. He did his in while downhill skiing at age 40, mine was playing soccer at age 29. He opted against surgery and had to give up tennis but kept skiing and running. I went for the surgery and now the only thing that bothers me is kneeling because of the scar down the middle of my knee.

On horses: Just days earlier, Shumlin had gone to the Preakness and come away a winner. His aide, Alexandra MacLean, posted an ill-advised photo on Facebook of him, her and a Democratic Governors Association staffer celebrating. (He was holding a winning ticket while the women were — what do I call it — swooning? Regular readers saw it here last week).

This photo, posted on Secretary of Civil and Military Affairs Alexandra MacLean's Facebook page, shows (from left) Governor Peter Shumlin with MacLean and Liz Smith of the Democratic Governors Association at the Preakness Stakes in Maryland.

What did Shumlin think of the photo? “I thought it was sweet,” he said.

Some would say it wasn’t very gubernatorial to have two women hanging on you, I said. “You never know what the people around you are doing,” he said.

Keep in mind that we were running, some of it uphill on an uneven trail single-file. The tape player doesn’t catch it, but he commented that he likes to have fun, that’s just who he is.

He related how he came to pick the right horses at Pimlico without knowing anything about horses.

On one of the earlier races that day, he said, he put $20 down on No. 2, claiming he sensed No. 2 was going to win. No. 2 won.

Next race, he bet on No. 2 again. Again, No. 2 won.

Next race, he said it wasn’t coming to him which horse to bet on. He went to the restroom and while he was at the urinal, the number four struck him. When he flushed, the bolt on the handle fell in the urinal, the attendant helpfully told him he didn’t have to retrieve it. “I knew then that four was right,” he said.

Indeed, No. 4 won. Shumlin had hauled in about $400. That was before he picked the winner in the final race.

He was telling me this as we were dodging rocks and roots, jumping puddles and climbing hills in the woods. Eventually, the task of running shut us both up.

On Green Mountain Power Corp.’s new power deal: The utility announced days earlier that it had reached a deal for cheaper power from the Seabrook, N.H., nuclear plant to replace most of what it’s been buying from Vermont Yankee, the plant Shumlin wants to shut down.

“Just what I’ve been saying, Entergy Lousiana doesn’t want us sell us cheap power on top of their other things, they won’t tell the truth, they don’t care about Vermont,” he said.

What about the irony of replacing it with out-of-state nuclear power? “There’s a difference between old nuclear and middle-aged nuclear,” he said, as in Vermont Yankee is old and Seabrook middle-aged. “They’re 19 years from relicensing. We weren’t having this conversation about Vermont Yankee 19 years ago.”

On Supreme Court Justice Denise Johnson’s retirement: She had announced it that afternoon. “She was a great justice,” he said, noting too that it’s “pretty cool” that he gets to appoint someone to the state’s highest court.

As we neared the end of the run, he pointed out where he hunts for morels (wild mushrooms) and ramps (wild scallions).

Emily caught up to us for the final time. “That was interesting,” she said, “shooting while chasing you, while dodging roots.”

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About Terri Hallenbeck

Terri Hallenbeck covers the Legislature, state government and politics for the Free Press. She is a 1983 graduate of the University of Vermont. After two years in the Peace Corps, she started her career in daily newspapers in 1986 and worked as a reporter and editor in upstate New York before moving back to Vermont in 1998.

Wow. Mr. Shumlin continues to dishonor the office of the Governor. Does he think the story about the urinal is dignfied? He said he thinks the picture of him on his gambling trip with two young women is “cute”. One has to question his judgement. If he had more respect for the office he holds, the one he was narrowly elected to, he’d conduct himself with a little more decorum. He is representing Vermonters after all.

This is unbelievable ……… the media describing what was going on in a urinal???????????? This is an example of the conduct of a newspaper (BFP) and the sordid life of a governor they support. Sick,sick,sick!

A Urinal story? you have got to be kidding me. That the BFP actualy chose to print this is beyond belief. I did not even read the story. I dont have to, to know this guy has the ear of the paper and you all think he is “cute” with the cheating on his spouse, “hooking up” like a 20 year old at a bar, and all that.

I take it may is 3 shamjob stories a week month? I just hope the rest of the year is 0.

This is what Vermonters get with a “Progressive” governor (Howard Dean called Shumlin the most “Progressive candidate” on his Act Blue website during the campaign. Picking his horse while watering his horse while at the track with his whores. Shumlin’s horse was a head by a nose.